Friday, December 30, 2011

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Back at my desk today, transitioning from my Christmas interlude, a time of shutting out the world and taking up the pleasures of showering family and friends with tokens of love and care and receiving same.

A shower of love trapped in a holiday, like a snowstorm trapped in a snow globe.

If you’ve been revolted by the fact that every $40,000 electric Chevy Volt sold by Government Motors enjoys a $7,500 rebate at the expense of taxpayers, then better have some Dramamine before you read any further. James Hohman of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has calculated that the total subsidies—direct and indirect, federal and state—poured into this white elephant could add up to $3 billion or $250,000 for every Volt sold to date. And this is not counting the 26 percent ownership that Uncle Sam still has in the company.

Nor does it count the subsidies that taxpayers like you and I provide to the manufacturers of the batteries used in the Volt. Add on an additional nearly $7,000 for that.

I say, if you want to drive a "green car," you should pay for it yourself.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

This astonishing composition by Polish composer Mikolaj Zielenski was published in Venice in 1611, four-hundred years ago. Here it is performed by the Ensemble européen William Byrd under the direction of Graham O'Reilly.

The Magnificat, also known as the Canticle of Mary, is one of the oldest hymns in Christendom, recording the words used by the Mother of God as she announced her pregnancy to her cousin Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with a son who would grow to become John the Baptist.

Luke 1:46-55

And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His Name. And His mercy is upon those who fear Him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with His arm, He has scattered the proud in his imagination of their hearts, He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever."

Monday, December 12, 2011

Global warming alarmists fail to mention that the up-and-down trends of Earth's climate made the planet much warmer than today when the Ancient Egyptians built their pyramids, the Romans built their empire, and Medieval British Islanders made wine from grapes they grew in their gardens.

Blaming a temporary warming trend (that has since reversed to a cooling trend) on a trace gas that is conveniently impossible to remove from the atmosphere, Europeans developed "emissions trading" schemes that Obama, his Obamatons, and the founders of fledgling "climate science" recognized as extremely lucrative to the "right" people, and I do not mean conservatives.

And what did Europe get for that money? "Limited benefits and embarrassing consequences," according to the report.

Anything Europe can do, the US can do better:

In a separate study, the U.S. Energy Department said the domestic cost could reach as much as $570 billion a year. And it would kill nearly 5 million jobs here.

So what kind of climate policy leadership can the American people expect from the various presidential candidates?

The following quotes, I think, pretty fairly sum up the expressed views of the people who hope to be in charge of U.S. policies on climate spending beginning in 2012.

Purveyors of Climate Alarm

Barack Hussein Obama: Not only is [climate change] real, it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.

Obama wants to cut carbon emissions by 80% through governmental regulations that sidestep Congress and thus the voters who are required to pay for the "hope and change" through higher taxes; lost jobs and individual freedoms; more expensive energy, goods, and services; more highway fatalities in "greener" (smaller and lighter) cars.

Gingrich has made numerous public statements supporting cap and trade legislation, if it were to include bi-partisan incentives for "development of new technologies . . . to achieve significant reductions in carbon loading." Read: money, money, money, money for "green" energy producers, even if they don't actually produce energy or produce it much more inefficiently at much higher cost.

Mitt Romney: I can't prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer . . . ." "[I]t's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors.

Huntsman is named after his billionaire father, Jon Huntsman, Sr., who made his fortune manufacturing chemicals. Huntsman Corporation holds global leadership positions in, among a number of other chemicals, ethylene and propylene carbonates. which are used in the production of lithium batteries.

Call me crazy, but I can think of certain financial benefits accruing to Huntsman Corporation from massive increases in the use of lithium batteries resulting from government subsidies for "green" automobiles, windmills, and solar devices and government restrictions on conventional energy production.

Climate Realists

Rick Perry:[The climate change scare] is all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight.

Rick Santorum: [The climate change scare is] just an excuse for more government control of your life, and I've never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative.

As a representative of a coal mining state who believes that "coal is not a dirty word," Santorum has vowed to reverse Obama's goal of "shutting down 60 coal fired power plants" and to "open up energy in America."

Although CO2 levels have been gradually rising, global warming stopped 12 years ago. Isn't it time we stopped paying for it?
__________

Saturday, December 10, 2011

According to a recent determination by the Defense Department, the Fort Hood Massacre of 14 people (including one unborn child) and the wounding of 29 others, was "workplace violence," not terrorism.

By that standard, the gunman who stood on the corner of Sunset and Vine in Hollywood, picking out motorists to shoot at, was an irate worker too: both he and Nidal Malik Hasan were reported by eyewitnesses to have shouted out their rationale for the shootings as "Allahu Akbar!"

Not that the mainstream media or the Obama administration want you to know that.

I imagine word will get around Hollywood, though, thus testing the Hollywood crowd's capacity for denial.

In the following video, an on-the-scene reporter makes much of the fact that the shooter was shouting, but shows little curiosity about the content of those shouts. One of the eyewitnesses sets him straight (around 2:40).

The names of the shooter's two victims, one of whom is in critical condition after being shot in the neck, the other of whom suffered a minor gunshot wound in the leg, have been made public.

The name of the gunman, who was killed by police fire, has not yet been released. (UPDATE: The shooter's name has now been released. It is Tyler Brehm, age 26.)

The 2012 Republican primaries will soon be at hand, and it is of utmost importance that the Republican nominee who will challenge Obama for the Presidency is not only cognizant of, but willing to fearlessly fight against the ever increasing force of islamic supremacist infiltration of the United States and the global threat presented by islamic supremacist conquest to freedom loving people everywhere.

Zilla offers a very convincing argument that Rick Santorum understands the threat of jihad and should be that nominee. Read her endorsement here.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

This December I'm following up on some of the news stories I've covered in this blog in 2011.

One of my pet peeves has been the Progressive War on CO2 as an agent of global warming, a fiction used to bolster countless money-grabbing schemes through the simple method of frightening schoolchildren and their parents with the supposedly evil specter of CO2, which is in fact a rare gas essential to life on Earth.

A Japanese photo taken during the aerial torpedo attack on "Battleship Row" on the far side of Ford Island. A torpedo has just struck USS West Virginia (center). Also seen are (from left) Nevada, Arizona, Tennessee, Oklahoma (torpedoed and listing) alongside Maryland, and California. (Courtesy: The History Place)

On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy drew the U.S. into World War II by conducting a surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, killing 2,335 servicemen and 68 civilians and wounding 1,178 others. The U.S. president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, called that day "a date that will live in infamy."

Indeed it was. By the time the Pacific War was over, Japan's killing rampage had taken the lives of about 30 million other people, including more than 100,000 U.S. military personnel.

Chinese man being used for bayonet practice.

Imperialist Japan was a militarist aggressor nation allied with fascist Germany and Italy that had already invaded and enslaved Korea (not yet divided into North and South); invaded China and conducted the Rape of Nanking, in which 50,000 Japanese soldiers murdered half of the Chinese capital city's 600,000 unarmed residents by stabbing, shooting, beheading, disemboweling, burning alive, or burying alive. All of these activities were photographed by Japanese military photographers. Among the dead were an estimated 20,000 - 60,000 females (including small girls and old women) who were first gang raped by Japanese soldiers. Japan had also invaded and taken over Manchuria and unsuccessfully tried to extend Japan's territory into the Soviet Union.

Three of Japan's prisoners of war

World War II, the product of the militarist ambitions of Japan, Germany, and Italy, disrupted the entire world. The war took the lives of somewhere between 62 and 78 million people, most of whom were civilians. In all, WWII killed about 3 of every 100 people alive on the planet at the time.

Today I am thinking about a conversation I had with a young historian who expressed his impatience for the opportunity to rewrite the history of WWII--after all the eyewitnesses and participants, who have written the current history, are dead. His goal is to demonstrate the failures of America and Americans during that war; the trespasses of soldiers in the heat of battle, the failure of American society to fight for our survival as a free nation in a manner that meets today's standards of political correctness.

His chance will come soon enough. The attack on Pearl Harbor was 70 years ago. No more than I can fully understand what it was like to grow up in a Victorian household with a set of Victorian ideals and standards, this young historian, raised in an atmosphere of moral equivalency and schooled ad nauseam in the supposed failures and evils of the American system, cannot understand that many of those who fought that war were men of honor and dignity.

I've known many of them. I have had the privilege of being introduced to the ideals of honor and dignity held by so many who sacrificed for liberty during World War II. I have known many men whose conduct, both during the war and until the end of their days, well reflected George S. Patton's admonition, "Duty is the essence of manhood."

This self-congratulatory young historian has almost no idea of what constituted the ideals of duty, honor, and dignity for Americans during World War II, and he doesn't want to know. But, by the looks of it, in today's educational system where duty, honor, and dignity are such conspicuously old-fashioned anachronisms that they are seldom if ever mentioned, he has in front of him every hope for a successful career furthering the cause of Blame America First.

If the truth were told, many more of those who today hold the U.S. in contempt would realize that they would not even be alive if it were not for the sacrifices made by Americans during WWII.

Are the lives they are living worthy of the sacrifices made to preserve them?

This is a question, I am convinced, that many Blame America First-ers do not dare to ask themselves.

If the cost is to weaken the U.S. by minimalizing the actual contributions of Americans to human liberties, the true history of World War II, however painful to today's sensibilities, should not be forgotten.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Of course, the occupiers are not calling their financial institution a bank. They are calling it a credit union: the People's Reserve Credit Union.

The occupiers plan to accumulate capital assets of $7 million or more through "investments" by organizations and individuals.

Each of the credit union's two planned branches will include a cafe and a commercial kitchen "available to rent."

The occupiers plan to employ homeless people and students to handle their members' sensitive information and money and to loan that money to other homeless people and students (the 2010 Obama takeover of the student loan industry notwithstanding).

Occupy SF already has filed the paperwork to make their financial institution a reality, they say.

America knows by now that government agencies have gone out of their way to "bend the law" to accommodate lawless occupiers in cities all over the country and have permitted occupiers to ignore laws and local regulations with impunity.

With that kind of "experience" under their belts, the SF occupiers have reason to believe that banking regulations for anti-capitalists will be just a little (shall we say) less stringent than for other financial institutions.

This should be interesting to watch. From afar.

It surely will be less interesting when the final bill is delivered to taxpayers--in one form or another.

Friday, December 2, 2011

This December, I'll be looking around to see how events have played out, so far, for some of 2011's newsmakers.

I'm starting out with the Wisconsin "sick note" doctors who, last February, cavalierly and shamelessly supplied hundreds of Wisconsin teachers with bogus sick notes so that those teachers could collect sick pay for days during which they were in fact healthy enough to attend a political rally at the state capitol. More than a thousand teachers skipped school to protest Governor Scott Walker's attempt to help balance Wisconsin's budget by requiring them and others paid from the public coffer to chip in a bit more for their own benefits and pensions.

Except for one doctor who works in a clinic, the "sick note" doctors were mostly faculty of the University of Wisconsin--Madison's Department of Family Medicine, where the healing arts curriculum apparently included how to perform the "public health and community outreach" of writing bogus sick notes to enable government employees to accomplish fraud.

Copies of the bogus sick notes and photos and on-the-scene video interviews of the doctors were quick to hit the blogosphere. Under pressure from this highly publicized breach of public trust in the medical profession by their own medical faculty and residents, the University "reviewed" 22 UW doctors said to have been involved in the sick note scam. By early July, most of the reviews (and appeals) had been (secretly) "resolved." Doctors found to be involved in the sick note scam reportedly received written reprimands or suffered some loss of pay and leadership position.

Starting in April, Wisconsin's Department of Safety and Professional Services investigated 11 of the doctors and eventually referred the names of 9 licensed physicians to the state's Medical Examining Board, which is responsible for licensing and disciplining physicians in Wisconsin. The Department suspected the doctors of failure to meet state standards for medical recordkeeping at their "get your free doctor's excuse table" at the Wisconsin Capitol protest.

In a closed session on November 16, the Medical Board decided to place letters of reprimand for the infraction of insufficient recordkeeping in the files of 7 of the doctors, 6 of whom teach at the University. Those seven are: Adam H. Balin, 51; Mark B. Beamsley, 41; Hannah M. Keevil, 50; Bernard F. Micke, 67; Kathleen A. Oriel, 47; James H. Shropshire, 50; and Louis A. Sanner, 59.

As the doctors' attorneys were quick to point out, the Medical Examining Board issued "no finding" that the doctors had "issued any fake sick notes or engaged in fraudulent behavior," a distinction that was not entirely lost on the Board's chairwoman, Dr. Sujatha Kailas, who opined:

"There may be other issues but, at this point, we felt disciplining them on the medical records would be enough to prevent such behavior in the future and send a message."

"This confirms my suspicion that the Medical Examining Board is a joke. Their goal is not to look after the public at large but to protect their buddies from an undue interruption in their careers," Grothman said.

The doctors, however, are not without numerous supporters among their fellow protestors. As one commenter at the Madison Journal Sentinal observed:

"I don't know why they are being disciplined, I was physically ill when I was there in February. Prove that I wasn't. Being around hardcore Republicans makes me ill."

Apparently, being around "hardcore Republicans" also makes that commenter more financially secure. As RB at The Right Sphere pointed out:

What happened to the Madison teachers who wanted to be paid by taxpayers to attend a political protest at the Wisconsin State Capitol?

Despite the brouhaha, 84 Madison teachers reportedly persisted in submitting "fraudulent sick notes that appeared to come from doctors at the protests." Those teachers were given until April 15 to "rescind" their submission of the fraudulent notes. The 38 teachers who clung to the swindle had "letters of suspension" placed in their personnel files. At least 1,000 other Madison teachers handed in sick notes from other doctors. Those sick notes were all deemed "legitimate" by the Madison School District. Nevertheless, two thirds of Madison teachers lost at least one day's pay for participating in the protest.
__________

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Satellite imagery seen by The Times confirmed that a blast that
rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment
facility there, despite denials by Tehran.

The images clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating
Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli
intelligence officials told The Times that there was "no doubt" that
the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was "no
accident".

That uranium enrichment facility used to look like this:

Courtesy AP

Now, not so much.

But that's not all:

The explosion at Iran's third-largest city came as satellite images
emerged of the damage caused by one at a military base outside Tehran
two weeks ago that killed about 30 members of the Revolutionary Guard,
including General Hassan Moghaddam, the head of the Iranian missile
defence program.

Iran claimed that the Tehran explosion occurred during testing on a new weapons system designed to strike at Israel. But
several Israeli officials have confirmed that the blast was intentional
and part of an effort to target Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel's former director of national
security, told Israel's army radio that the Isfahan blast was no
accident. "There aren't many coincidences, and when there are so
many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps
it's the hand of God," he said....

Linked by Chris at Wyblog, who also reports the good news that the solar energy boondoggle is fizzling out and that Mark Steyn reads our dear Pundette (being the smart fellow that he is). Thanks for spreading the word, Chris.
__________

Monday, November 28, 2011

That's right. Just when you thought you had something to really celebrate--the retirement of that Great National Impoverisher, Barney Frank, from his 16-term Congressional seat in Massachusetts, comes the gut-wrenching reminder that Maxine Waters is next in line to take over over ol' Barney's enormously powerful ranking Democrat position on the House Committee on Financial Services.

Even though Barney's retirement won't begin until the end of next year, his retirement announcement still sounds like a tune a long-suffering country could dance to. Frank left his thumbprints all over the subprime mortgage crisis that's still reverberating through our suffering economy, and he's remained up to mischief ever since.

But consider a few items on the track record of his presumed successor as lead Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. Maxine Waters, who has had 11 terms in which to sink her tentacles deep into Congress, managed to get one of those tentacles so deeply embedded in the government cookie jar that even Nancy Pelosi felt the need to call for an ethics examination.

But the Democrat leadership has delayed Waters' trial by blocking subpoenas and firing the lead lawyer working on the two-year investigation. Also, the ranking Democrat on the House Ethics panel reportedly is holding up the hiring of a new staff director.

The ever-creative Maxine had pressured bank examiners into bailing out her husband's bank, OneUnited, with $12 million of TARP money and then had gotten OneUnited "a unique exemption from the FDIC's accounting rules." Not so difficult a task, apparently, for a member of House Oversight and Investigations subcommittee.

OneUnited Bank certainly was in trouble: Its CEO had recently been busted for cocaine possession, and the FDIC had ordered it to cease and desist operations due to its "unsafe banking practices." "Of the 700 banks receiving TARP funds, OneUnited was the weakest."

More to the point, however, is that the $12 million of TARP money saved Maxine's husband, one of the bank's directors, in excess of $350,000: the value of the his OneUnited stocks that, without the bailout using public funds, would have been worthless.

Today, Maxine Waters, who is the House Chief Deputy Whip, also "serves" as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government Sponsored Enterprises and on the Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity; the Committee on the Judiciary; the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet; the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement; and the Committee on Steering and Policy.

Friday, November 25, 2011

How many "units" over age 70 will have to die before the people of this country get rid of ObamaCare?

Uh, so far, nobody is talking about what the Obamatons have in mind for "units" under age 4.

Addendum 1/10/12: This post is still getting a lot of traffic, so I am adding this chart to clarify why I fear that ObamaCare could put children under the age of 4 at risk of facing health care rationing similar to that imposed on the elderly? Check out the health rationing curve published by Obama's health care advisor, Ezekiel Emanuel:

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Mocking Harvard has become a very satisfying sport, particularly since that university has aroused so much ire in the last few years for its contributions to the breakdown of the body politic, starting with awarding law degrees to Barack and Michelle and supporting their advance to the White House.

Time and again, Harvard has proven themselves soooo easy to mock, it is embarrassing. All one needs do is repeat facts, such as:

On Wednesday, November 9, Occupy Harvard began. The university is frequently accused of being an “academic gatekeeper,” but the administration and police response to the nascent protest movement has made this gatekeeping uncomfortably literal: Harvard Yard has been placed on indefinite “lockdown,” meaning two-level ID-checks at every entrance.

That's rich. Pun intended. Howie Carr at the Boston Herald is among those who are appalled:

So
let me get this straight: Harvard students are “occupying” the Yard to
protest how the 1 percent keep the 99 percent in economic servitude. But
the Crimson protest against capitalist oppression is by invitation
only, and all the gates on campus have been locked, chained and
padlocked to keep out the real 99 percent?

Harvard's lockdown is that university's way of saying, "Tough luck" to extension students, visiting scholars, tourists, members of the press, and in general the folks in Cambridge who pay the property taxes that Harvard would have to pay if it paid taxes, which it does not.

By the way, this is the first time Harvard has ever been on full lockdown. Which is another way of Harvard saying that it is far more frightened of the 2011 "occupiers" than it ever was of the 1969 Vietnam War protesters. Think of that.

The pampered pukes are saying their faux encampment of Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean tents is “symbolic.” It sure is — symbolic of the breathtaking hypocrisy of these limousine liberals.

They’re in solidarity with the rabble ... as long as the riff-raff stay on their side of the wall.

One certainly can empathize with Harvard for not wanting to scrape human excrement off its lawns and having tuberculosis and lice spread to its faculty and students. But Harvard is not too eager to grant other people the right to protect their property.

Now nobody can walk across the Yard unless he has a Harvard ID. They tried something like this in Arizona, and as I recall everyone at Harvard denounced SB 1070 as racism, as in, “They’re checking papers in Arizona!”

Now the moonbats are checking papers in Harvard Square. . . .

When political correctness comes in one of Harvard's gates, rationality flies out the window.

But what if an illegal alien wants to cross the Yard? Remember, when an illegal falsified his application to get into Harvard, they gave him a scholarship. When an American kid from Delaware tried to pull the same stunt, they gave him six months at Billerica House of Correction.

And what if Skippy Gates tries to take a shortcut across campus and he doesn’t have his ID with him? Will Barack say the campus cops “acted stupidly?” Will there be a sushi summit at the White House?

Carr tells it like it is:

Occupy Harvard Yard is like when you were 6 years old, and you went camping ... in your backyard, with your father. If you got scared, you could just run back in the house to get a hug from Mommy.

Which is the atmosphere one might reasonably expect Harvard to provide for their immature students new to the ways of the real world.

Harvard Yard is not altogether pink just yet. "Some freshmen from balcony dorms," those apparently still capable of rational thought, "yelled 'We are the 1 percent! We are the 1 percent!'” It is unclear whether those students were referring to their own incomes, their family incomes, or Harvard's income, which is not unsubstantial.

In 2008, Harvard's endowment was $37 billion, making it the second-wealthiest non-profit in the world, after the Catholic Church. When comparing the two institutions, it is useful to note that the Catholic Church has existed since the time of Christ and has acquired property in every location in the world in which Catholics have built a church during the last two millennia, whereas Harvard was founded less than 400 years ago and is pretty much confined, physically, to Cambridge, Massachussetts. When referring to Harvard, the term "non-profit" is most accurately defined as "pays zero taxes on its enormous investments and holdings, which circumstance does not stand in the way of it receiving enormous amounts of tax money collected from people locked out of Harvard Yard."

Sadly, any mocking of Harvard University is done through tears of woe. In just a few years, Harvard's students, rational or not, like the cadre of Harvard professors "serving" in the Obama administration, are going to be making decisions--big decisions--about your future and mine.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

A judge ruled against Occupy Wall Street protesters, upholding a move by New York City and the landlord of the privately owned plaza to clear tents from Zuccotti Park and prevent protesters from bringing equipment back in.

Hours after police cleared the last protester from their encampment Tuesday, lawyers for the city and Brookfield Office Properties faced off with Occupy Wall Street representatives inside a courtroom.

Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman weighed whether to extend a temporary restraining order that bars the city from enforcing park rules against tents and other camping equipment. The original ruling came after police and sanitation workers had already swept all personal belongings from the two-month-old encampment, with more than 200 people arrested in the raid.

Lice, tuberculosis, scabies, garbage, trash, illicit drugs, human waste, and wireless technology still welcome. Not sure about the drums and rats. Update: The occupiers say they will be subject to search before entering Zuccotti Park, which might (maybe) perhaps (possibly) mean that illicit drugs are not (entirely) welcome.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Friday, November 11, 2011

Especially in my thoughts today are the veterans who care for their fellow veterans, particularly those who care for our wounded vets in VA facilities around the nation.

Thank you, and God bless you.

This video comes courtesy of molinelobo, whose father, a sailor and former tailor, was called upon in January of 1943 to hurriedly help make Franklin Delano Roosevelt's flag, featured in the video. This flag was flown by the USS Memphis, the cruiser that transported Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Casablanca Conference, where FDR and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill outlined plans for the invasion of Sicily and Italy and met with representatives of the Free French Forces. The flag now resides in the Roosevelt Presidential Library.
__________

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

In the age-old game of "follow the money," it's always interesting to see where government is spending our hard-earned (or expensively borrowed) cash. Over at Business Insider, Bruce Krasting has invited us to take a look at who is getting cheap money from the government.

As of September 30, 2011, the Federal Financing Bank, which is owned by the U.S. Treasury and operated by Tim Geitner, had lent, sold, or guaranteed $58 billion to business enterprises.

This past September, the bank made loans of money that U.S. taxpayers can expect never to see again, from a hefty $1.5 billion to the U.S. Postal Service (that will be broke by summer) to a piddling (by federal standards) $214 thousand to Beacon Power Corporation (they are already bankrupt).

Don't let the size of those numbers fool you though. The U.S. Postal Service owes the American people a total of $13 billion, and Beacon Power (another green whitewash by the Obama administration) owes a us a total of $40 million. Kiss all of that good-bye. Various and sundry solar companies, over time, have racked up bills totaling $4.9 billion, about a quarter of which is already toast.

But lookee here:

Ford Motor Company got $364.5 million in long-term loans at 1.4% interest. In just the month of September.

Tesla Motors got 90.8 million in long-term loans at 1% interest and 1.4% interest. That's not their first gov't loan, of course.

Nissan North America got $33.6 million in long-term loans at 1% interest, 1.8% interest, and 2.5% interest. Nissan gets your money without ever having sold you a car?

A couple of years ago, so much money was transferred from the public coffers to General Motors that it earned the new moniker, Government Motors. Around the same time, half a billion in taxpayer dollars went to Fisker Automotive to build electric cars in Finland. That's also when Tesla Motors was approved for almost half a billion dollars in federal loans on an "as needed" basis.

For the Obama administration's extension of their tentacles into the automobile industry, it looks like GM, Tesla, and Fisker were just a start.
__________

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

A 375% increase of a nice, comfortable 72°F would be 270°F HOT, a temperature certain to be noticed by global warmists if they had not already been reduced to soup. (Apologies for yesterday's incorrect calculation, oops.)

However, when it comes to a 375% increase in spending on education over the last 40 years--with NO associated increase in reading, math, or science scores--Lefties like this Palestine-sympathizing#OWSer [video 2] think that people who want to get rid of the Department of Education are fools.

They seem to have forgotten that old adage about a fool and his money.

While far from the worst windstorm ever, this screamer will knock out power, down trees and cause damage in New England, New York, New Jersey, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia....

That's no joke: One reason that trees have evolved to lose their leaves in the winter is to reduce their surface area to protect them from the weight of snow. Snow settling on tree leaves enormously increases the weight of trees, causing branches and tree trunks to break and shallow-rooted trees to topple.

Even in areas that receive little or no snow, the force of the wind on fully leafed trees standing in saturated soil will lead to falling timber.

This could end up being worse than Irene in terms of downed trees and power outages, because winds will be stronger over a larger area.

Trees and limbs can crash down on power lines, houses, vehicles and passing pedestrians. Avoid wooded areas and tree-lined streets during this storm.

Sadly, at the very least, this storm will be a trial for people in affected areas, most especially those barely beginning to recover from recent severe flooding.

And then, as Ace has sagely noted, in certain East Coast "occupation zones," such as Zuccotti Park, it "looks like some faith in Global Warming™ is about to be tested." (H/t: Fishersville Mike) Reality is a hard teacher.
__________

Like other Tea Party groups, the Richmond (VA) Tea Party has played by the rules. They paid permit fees to hold their rallies, they paid for the extra police and portajohns that such rallies demand. In all, they’ve paid $10,000 for their rallies to the local government.

Colleen Owens, spokeswoman for the Richmond TEA Party, has pointed out, "the Occupy Richmond protesters are not being asked to pay for the park they are camped out in, nor are they paying for police or portable toilets. Not only that, the Occupy protesters reportedly have not paid for permits nor are they being required to pay for emergency personnel."

"If that’s how they’re going to run the city," Owens says, "then they owe us our fees back."

So the Richmond TEA Party plans to invoice the City of Richmond for the $10,000 they shelled out to conduct their demonstrations according to the law.

Good move, Richmond Tea Party! This kind of action puts the lie to local government claims that they don't exert huge discretionary power when deciding who must obey the law--and who doesn't need to bother.

"It’s not fair," said Owens, "the City of Richmond’s picking and choosing whose First Amendment rights trump someone else’s First Amendment rights." Nor is it fair that the TEA Party is being "punished for following the law."

So, how will the City of Richmond respond?

Bruce W. Tyler, a Richmond City Councilman, had some thoughts on the subject. "I guess we'll be writing a check to the tea party people. . . . You can't treat one group different from the other. It's unfair."

For the tea party to request the "same consideration, I believe, is fair and just," Tyler added. "We've now hit the slippery slope that we never should have found ourselves on."

Tyler went on to say that by not enforcing city ordinances, Richmond is "clearly advocating what's going on down there."

Occupy Richmond

The Tea Party also purchased a required $1 million insurance policy, but--you guessed it--Occupy Richmond did not. Tyler has gotten that particular message loud and clear:

[B]y not enforcing ordinances already in place, the city is "clearly advocating what's going on down there" and putting itself in a position of potential liability if one of the protesters gets injured or worse, Tyler said.

At least one person already has been injured at the plaza.

Meanwhile, Richmond's mayor's office remains quiet as the Mummy's tomb, waiting for the Richmond Tea Party's invoice for $10,000 to arrive in the mail--and, no doubt, waiting for a return call from the city attorney.
__________

The three #OWStreeters featured in this short video seem natural candidates for future Darwin Awards, possibly earned after they emigrate to North Korea to enjoy their new jobs and great benefit packages.

There is a catch, though. According to Darwin Award rules, candidates are disqualified if "innocent bystanders," who might have contributed positively to the gene pool, are killed in the process. That rule disqualifies every Commie-lovin' #Occupier. If there's any single outstanding feature shared by communist governments worldwide, it is the production of millions upon millions of innocent bystanders.